Stereo Tool Presets.

WHAT IS STEREO TOOL?

Stereo Tool is an entirely software based broadcast audio processor. The music you hear in any broadcast environment is processed before streaming or transmission. This is done for four main reasons.

• To create a consistent sound. Varying audio sources, whether it be different songs, guest mics, outside broadcasts will all sound a little different. A processor tidies everything up.

• To adhere to legal requirements. For example, broadcast radio is required to limit output levels and ensure levels do not exceed those limits.

• To create an brand image through sound. Many stations only need to be heard and you know you’re listening to a particular station purely because of how they sound. Processors are setup a very particular way depending on a stations music, image and audience.

• To have a competitive advantage. Sounding loud and sounding good make people stay tuned into your station.

This job is often done by hardware but Stereo Tool is designed to give you the full capability, control and audio quality of the hardware equivalent on a Windows, Mac or Linux based system. It’s not the cheapest software out there but it’s considerably cheaper than the hardware equivalent.

If you want to try it, the creator allows you to test it fully for as long as you like. A tone will be inserted every so often making it useless for recording or broadcast but absolutely fine for testing and tweaking.

HOW DOES IT SOUND?

I can’t post copyrighted audio online but here are the full wav recordings of a few of the songs demonstrated in the video below.

All music is downloaded from Artlist. If you download the test tracks to listen on your system, please do not distribute them. You can use them in your creative projects with an appropriate license from Artlist.

The biggest problem with audio processors such as this is that, although they have the ability to sound amazing, they have to be setup correctly and the setup has to match the music. It is easy to tweak, make them sound terrible and then never find your way back. Stereo Tool has a good selection of presets to work with, some better than others.

WHAT’S AVAILABLE?

I’ve created a couple of presets in the time that I’ve been using Stereo Tool but I’ve only been completely happy with one of them. The downloads below are just variants on that one preset. The only differences between them are simple AGC and EQ adjustments to give a dense fuller sound or something little less aggressive.

These presets are designed for pop or rock music but work surprisingly well with something a bit lighter due to some nice gating in the tool itself.

Remember that these are streaming presets only. I do not own a license for the FM or AM portion of the software as I have no use for it.

WANT TO SEE STEREO TOOL IN ACTION?